Forbidden Fate (Crowne Point 3)

I looked over my shoulder at Grayson. “You had that chance. You’re not the man I depend on anymore.”

“You can’t honestly tell me you trust West?”

No, I don’t, but I could say, “I don’t trust you, Grayson Crowne.”

He reeled. “What? You’d trust him over me?”

I swallowed. I don’t know who to fucking trust. I’m in a bed of snakes, and they’re all begging for my wrist.

Grayson was the one man I trusted above all, and he’d shattered that trust.

I tried to yank my wrist but he held on tighter, blanching the bone.

“You realize how ridiculous this is, right? It doesn’t add up. He’s a snake.”

“What’s so crazy? How someone like him could want to give everything up for someone like me and then actually go through with it?”

His shoulders tensed so much I could see the muscles twerk in his golden neck.

“Or why someone like me would go back to someone like him? How pathetic and weak I am?”

Something flickered in his eyes. Regret maybe. The emotion clouded and muted in this shadowed hallway.

When he spoke, his voice was his signature stone. “Both.”

I pulled at my wrist again, furious. He dragged me to him, my hands slamming against his chest.

“Did he hire you guards?” he demanded. “Get you a girl? Get you anything? You’re still wearing your nun clothes.”

“I’ll hire them myself,” I all but spat. “I’ll get everything myself.”

He looked at me with pity. “You only have a couple million dollars. Some of which I’m sure you’re allotting for the child—which you don’t need to do,” he added the last part, giving me a dark, possessive look that went straight to my gut.

Of course I needed to do it.

I couldn’t trust Grayson, as much as my heart said I should.

“A full-time bodyguard costs anywhere from fifty to five hundred dollars an hour,” he continued. “Ours are thousands. We employ only the best ex-special ops. You can’t have someone watching you twenty-four seven, which means you’ll need at least two, but I want you to have ten.”

“Ten,” I gasped. “I’m not some princess.”

“That was my low number,” Grayson said. “At least a million for them.”

“A million?” I blinked. “A million dollars? That’s almost all my money.”

“Not including room and board, food, airfare, etcetera.”

“Being rich is so expensive,” I whispered.

He pushed a curl from my face, behind my ear, jaw clenched tight.

“Let me hire them if your fucking husband won’t do it.”

I liked the way he said husband…his usually apathetic voice catching on a snarl. It fed something wrong inside me.

“No,” I whispered. “I’m not getting in debt further.”

“I’m not going to ask you to pay me back,” he growled. “And I’m not going to sit back and let you get hurt.”